Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Nazi Trespassers in Tibet

Grieve afresh for luckless Tibet. Out of the blue comes the disclosure that Heinrich Harrer, the author of ''Seven Years in Tibet,'' was not only a Nazi but a sergeant in Himmler's SS. Since Mr. Harrer was friend and tutor of the young Dalai Lama 50 years ago, this long-kept secret may now be undeservedly used in China's campaign to discredit the exiled Tibetan.

Along with the Dalai Lama, millions of readers of ''Seven Years'' believed its author was merely an Austrian mountaineer who escaped to Lhasa in the 1940's from a British prison camp in India. After leaving Tibet, transformed by the Buddhist kingdom, Mr. Harrer devoted his life to nonviolence and human rights, a spiritual journey now being recast into a Tri-Star film for release this fall with Brad Pitt as the Austrian climber.

One wonders how Tri-Star, a division of Sony, will cope with the unexpected new twist in the story as divulged in the German magazine Stern. Mr. Harrer, now 84, called the revelation ''extremely unpleasant'' but said his conscience was clean. There is no evidence that he took part in atrocities, but Stern asserts that in 1933, while it was still illegal in Austria, Mr. Harrer joined the SA, or Brownshirts, and five years later entered the SS, Hitler's elite special force, as a sports instructor.

This SS connection to Tibet is not an entire surprise. The Nazis were obsessed by Central Asia, as evident in the swastika, a symbol they purloined variously from ancient India, Persia and Tibet. According to their ethnic pseudo-science, Asia was the ancestral cradle of the Aryan race. By virtue of their isolation, Tibetans were deemed racially ''pure,'' and hidden somewhere in their mountains was Shambhala, an earthly paradise and inspiration for James Hilton's Shangri-La.

All this was of peculiar interest to Heinrich Himmler, the SS Reichsfuhrer, a devotee of the occult. Himmler recruited Dr. Ernst Schafer, an SS major who had in 1934 led a Tibetan expedition sponsored by a science academy in Philadelphia. Schafer returned to Tibet in 1938 as head of an SS team.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Schafer's team filmed and measured Tibetans, but also prepared maps and surveyed passes for possible use of Tibet as a staging ground for guerrilla assaults on British India. This melding of motives is an old story for Tibet, and contributed powerfully to its present agony. Legally closed to the outside world at Chinese insistence, Tibet in the 19th century had the irresistible allure of the forbidden.

In India, the British trained Hindu volunteers to pose as pilgrims, and some did reach and map Lhasa. Russia responded by using its own Buddhists as ''pilgrims,'' and so alarmed the British that in 1904, Lord Curzon, as Viceroy of India, sent an expeditionary force to subdue Lhasa and end Tibet's isolation.

For explorers, entering or ''penetrating'' Tibet was a passport to fame. For imperial powers, Tibet was of strategic importance, given its location and spiritual significance. The world refused to leave this ancient and fascinating theocracy alone even as it struggled for greater independence. China finally responded by occupying Tibet in 1950, and later forced the Dalai Lama into exile.

That something precious was lost is implicit in the Heinrich Harrer story. Those seven years he spent in Lhasa as a close companion to a living god, the 14th Dalai Lama, chosen by divination as an infant, touched even an erstwhile Nazi. The pity is that Mr. Harrer did not tell the truth about himself long, long ago. KARL E. MEYER

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this editorial appears in print on July 7, 1997, on Page A00014 of the National edition with the headline: Nazi Trespassers in Tibet. Today's Paper|Subscribe